Pajamas Media “Letter to the Republican Presidential Candidates from a Former Democrat”

As you all know, we are living in parlous times, the most economically precarious since the Great Depression and the most militarily threatening since the fall of the Soviet Union. Many of our citizens fear this great country of ours is on the edge of collapse. Desperation stalks the land.

Yet if we were to watch the Republican debates, for the most part, all we see is bicker, bicker, bicker with candidates looking to score points off their opponents. Worse yet, most of these points are based on obscure malfeasances that would have little to do with how those opponents would actually perform as president.

Tuesday night in Las Vegas it almost reached the level of opera bouffe with one candidate vitriolically accusing another of, albeit unconsciously, using an illegal alien in his gardening service (something so common here in Southern California that, were laws enforced, three quarters of the population would be in jail). Nevertheless, instead of waving off this petty accusation or, better yet, turning it into a joke, the second candidate came back even harder. For a moment it almost seemed the two would come to blows – over nothing.

Everybody’s got an ego, everybody wants to win, but if you have to achieve that by cutting down the other guy, maybe you don’t deserve to lead, not these days anyway. Things are too extreme, the stakes too high. We need someone who can rise above it. Maybe even smile.